Gravitational Attraction
What would happen if two people out in space a few meters apart, abandoned by their spacecraft, decided to wait until gravity pulled them together? My initial thought was that …
Life from non-life and other conundrums
In the Unbelievable podcast episode 27 Oct 2007 - Top reasons for belief there is a discussion about good arguments for God. Two questions were raised as evidence for God that I think are telling:
- how do you get life from non-life?
- how do you get the personal from the impersonal?
The answers to these questions points to the properties of God, as traditionally understood.
My first reaction is, even if we didn’t know the answers to these questions we would still not be in a position to make a positive claim for the explanation (e.g. God) without making the further step of obtaining evidence for the positive claim. This is a God-of-the-Gaps move.
Secondly, although neither question is understood in sufficient detail, we have made substantial progress in understanding the origin of life and the origin of consciousness. Far more progress than is made by assuming an agent simply created it. We should avoid jumping to a positive claim without the evidence for that claim, and note our tendency to do just that in the face of mystery.
